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The /r/hockey Trade Deadline Game - Day 2 Thread
NOTE: This is FAKE HOCKEY. To talk about actual hockey, go to the latest Daily Discussion thread Trade Deadline Tonight will continue TONIGHT! The /hockey Trade Deadline Game is back for day 2! Starting today at 8:00 AM MT trading is officially open again. Trading will run until Thursday, January 30th at 6:00 PM MT. You are not late! You can still sign up at http://www.tdgdb.com When you are traded, change your flair on hockey-related subreddits and spend the week from January 31st through February 7th cheering for your new team. Here are this year's reporters, the people who will make things up break news of trade negotiations:
Closest Mario Kart 8 Game (and Switch) to Mountain West Schools
It has been said that the Mountain West conference is “At the Peak,” and to me, nothing illustrates that more, than the fact that there are 12 teams competing in the only NCAA Division 1 conference that sponsors e-sports. Of course, since the matches are played head-to-head, Boise State has an advantage because they tint the monitors blue, and play with all blue avatars; an advantage that is confirmed in their winning of League of Legends and Overwatch, but with the Spring season being cut, next year the Mountain West has announced that they will be playing Mario Kart 8, for the Nintendo Switch. Due to the large amounts of people in the Mountain West cities suddenly having $1200 burning a hole in their pocket, every store that sells Nintendo Switch has sold out of their allotment; yes, even, Amazon. So, thus the conundrum becomes: How can these players, prospects, and ordinary people practice in order to “git gud” as the gamers would say? Well, that’s where I come in. For, you see, since I am allowed out on the streets again, finally, due to both my prison sentence being cut short, and my work being determined to be “essential,” I had the time to scope out some places. Alas, while my cough and fever are not improving as much as I had hoped since I last got back from Italy, I did manage to find some time to visit all of the Mountain West cities in order to find the easiest place to get a Switch and Mario Kart 8 location. For simplicity’s sake, I am going by the football stadium since it’s a well-defined point in most locations – San José State fans, the football stadium is that big ovoid building at the corner of E Alma Ave, and S 7th St… It’s the place where the people aren’t on Saturday’s is September. Should you get hungry during your travels, I have also managed to find a some breakfast locations in the same vicinity
Okay, so I lied a little; I tried to get into the university, but, unfortunately the men with guns wouldn’t actually let me get beyond the gate on S Gate Rd, and I was still a little jet-lagged having just gotten in from Frankfurt after having woken up for my 0610 flight for the Linate to Frankfurt leg (stupid weather prevented the flight from Denver to ABQ, but my loss is your gain). So, while this may not be the closest, it certainly will fit the bill. Tyler-Jay Rowland who lives at 3075 Navigation Drive, in Colorado Springs was more than willing to help out, especially since his son, Jeremiah, was grounded for a month for staying out after curfew two weekends in a row. As the falcon flies, this location is 5.2 miles away; in a car, it’s not too much further than that.
Boise State
Now, I don’t, technically, hate the way that Boise is laid out with the river running right through the center of town, but even though Maci Drew lives in the Clearwater Apartments, unit 323, which is in a straight line, only a quarter of a mile from the stadium, you will have to go the Exxtramile, to get to her apartment. Also, she would like me to point out, that times for a waitress like herself are a little rough, so please, if you’re hungry, skip Taco Bell, and eat at the Bar Gernika in downtown Boise, right next to the Central Plaza and Century Link Arena. “We have wifi” she said.
Colorado State
This is, by far, the most remarkable location; I had completely forgotten that they moved to an on-campus stadium, so I initially went to the Hughes Stadium location, and found a big pile of dirt. And not much else – well, if you exclude the trees that formed a nice line, that brought me back to my college days. Having corrected my too old Garmin in-car GPS, I found Tim Thatcher on 604 Balsam Ln; he’s a little deaf, so you might need to knock like you are ram-ing down the door. He bought the Switch after his wife of 35 years died to help him grieve and spend his retirement, “but it’s just making me too sad lately, and I’ve never been very good at vid’ya [sic] games. I still don’t know how I’m supposed to save the princess when she’s trying to beat me… That reminds me of my princess, who I lost last year. She was so kind, we met in high school, I had an onion on my belt as was the style in those days. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.” I’ll be honest, at this point I started zoning out because, again, fever. He honestly looked really sad as I was talking to him, so you might want to try to cheer him up, since he’s just a lonely guy bein’ a dude. In a straight line distance, you’re only going .3 miles, and it’s not too much further by car.
New Mexico
This is by far the closest location to the stadium. The UNM Lobo Club is a non-essential business in the state of New Mexico, and UNM and the Athletics Department realized that funding would need to be cut dramatically throughout the state, and with the sweetheart deal they got from the legislature this year, they decided to close all athletic facilities, including the Maloof building, home of both Eddie Nuñez’s office, and the Lobo Club. I suggest using the side door closest to the field level entrance of the stadium. That’ll take you to the weight room; an alarm will go off, the code is “1892” the year the football team first played (interesting tidbit: the marching band was founded in 1889, the same year as the university); from there enter the main hallway, and go to the first door on the left after you pass the restrooms. The last time I was there, they had a vending machine that dispensed free Mountain Dew; I was howl-ing with laughter after I found that. Also, if you see Señor Manta, say “Hola!” he’s been down on his luck since his family were killed in the accident, and now he wanders the street like a lone Lobo.
Utah State
It was like a bomb went off. No one was around; maybe they were busy playing Farmer, or having a bonfire out in the dirt behind the stadium, wit their brown-eyed girls, but Jeff Field’s dorm room, Aggie Village Community building 17, first floor, third window from the right (he leaves it unlocked, so don’t worry about access) has a Switch just sitting there on the bed, as though he borrowed it from someone, but never managed to return it before he left. Go on, take it, just say that it was yours and he left it, no one will check.
Wyoming
Cowboys and Cowgirls are just different, I guess; I could not find a Nintendo Switch in town for the life of me. I found many Switchblades, Light switches, and many wooden rods, so I took my horse down to Cheyenne, and found a recently laid-off Subway Sandwich Artist called Dom, who knew just where to look. He directed me to 803 West 21st St, Suite B. He told me, “yeah, the guy who runs this storefront, has a little son, about 6 years old. He keeps a Switch in his desk’s keyboard tray for when he picks his son up from school.” Because of the ordeal in Laramie, I asked him to clarify, and he did, “yeah… Nintendo switch.” He said as he looked around shiftily. If that doesn’t work you can always try Suite C, I heard they stock Switches… oh wait, not that kind.” I was going to ask him for more information, but he entered what looked like an abandoned brick building just passed the railroad tracks, “You didn’t see me,” he said. And I also didn’t hear the gunshots that went off as I walked back to my car.
Table View
School
Distance Driving (mi)
Straight Line Distance (mi)
Drive/Drone Difference
Variance (from all schools)A
Air Force
8.44
5.22
3.22
0.047
Boise State
1.00
0.282
0.718
1.069
Colorado State
0.420
0.312
0.108
1.792
New Mexico
0.206
0.191
0.015
1.920
Utah State
0.444
0.305
0.139
1.751
Wyoming
47.90
40.69
7.21
4.894
A: Variance is calculated based upon DDD’s distance from the standard deviation of DDD… Why DDD? Because, DDD is King.
Note: SDSU currently does not field an Esports team; I am including them because it seems likely that they will in the near future
Hawai’i
Hawai’i is interesting because the Honolulu airport has a much better open air location than the El Paso airport; there’s a water path, it’s weird man, it reminds me a lot of the Tiki Room at Disn… oh, yeah, Hawai’i, Polynesia, that makes sense. Anyway, the stadium is home to the largest swap meet’s I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, I did not find any Switches, but I did find a guy swapping Macadamia Nut cookies for a few dollars, so naturally, I bought some. It started to rain, so even though many people are Rainbow Warriors or Wahine, as the women prefer to be called, I am not. I stopped in at the ‘Aeia Public Library for a spell, and my phone was dead, so I needed a place to charge for a bit. The nice librarian, Akela (“it means graceful,” I was told. After I asked, “like the wolf-spirit in Hindi myths?”), pointed out, that, “We loan out all sorts of stuff here; pots, pans, sewing machines. Believe it or not, we even rent out video game systems. Our most popular is probably the Nintendo Switch, but we also have a couple of Xbox’s and PS4’s.” I guess I looked very shocked because Akela continued, “with the military surrounding us, we, the library system, get a lot of goods from contractors who don’t want to have a lot of their goods shipped back to the mainland.” Seeing how much it cost to ship out, I completely understood, and bid ¬¬Akela aloha, and failed the Hawai’I test by passing out at the nearest Embassy Suites, in Kapolei, if I remember correctly (I probably don’t, I was tired).
Fresno State
A nice cow brought me to Clovis. Much like what happened in Las Vegas, it was not the cool one, but instead the one in California. She (I saw udders), brought me specifically to 264 Clovis Ave, and said, “what you seek, from my master, is in there.” I’m not sure if it was my fever, jet-lag, a combination of them, or something else entirely, but then the cow vanished as though she was just a thing on the internet. A stray puppy passed by me in downtown, so that was probably the highlight of the trip.
Nevada (Reno)
Look, I’ll be honest, Reno to me always makes me feel like I’m going to be leaving the city without one or both of my kidneys. I don’t know why I expect Renoirs to chew my body like a Pack of Wolves, but there you are. Diedre Thomas of 128 Keystone Ave, fell on hard times. She poured herself a glass of vodka, neat, and said, “you can have anything you want,” she paused briefly to wink at me, “for the right price.” I specifically enquired about the Switch, “Anything,” she replied. She pulled out what appeared to be a small glass bowl that looked like an incense holder, and a baggie of chalk dust, and… Oh my god, she was going to smoke cocaine. Anyway, as she pulled out the pulled out the baggie, I hastily took my leave. I then went to the airport and went to my next stop….
Nevada – Las Vegas
Can you believe parents still bring their children, like elementary school aged children to Las Vegas. And it’s not the cool Las Vegas, in New Mexico, it’s the one in Nevada; well, I guess, technically they bring their kids to Paradise, and not Las Vegas, but c’mon man, there isn’t that much difference. Anyway, head to the Excalibur hotels because Carla, the housekeeper said that on average 3 Switches get left by guests every day. I then felt really depressed while walking around the hotel, so I left to check out the Mirage, where I normally stay on these Mountain West trips. I also learned that if there’s one thing that freaks me out more than the throngs of people walking the Strip, it’s when there’s nobody around. Once the new stadium gets completed it will be vastly easier to get to the casino than at the current location.
San Diego State
I stayed with Dominic, at his house of Friars Road. I was starting to feel sick to my stomach with the lack of green chile, so it was so enjoyable to spend time with a fellow New Mexican (and my roommate junior year). He took me on a little tour: Balboa Park’s stadium (home of the former Harbor Bowl, and the first tie in UNM Football history), the USS Midway, and Ocean Beach. I had forgotten about the assignment until I looked down at my feet and found a working Switch. When it was still there after an hour, I borrowed a small boat, realised, I need a bigger boat and headed out to the Ocean. Having claimed rights, I then put it back, so you might also find it.
San José State
Look, there are a lot of people who depart from the San Jose Airport. The kids who travel on these flights are slightly scatter-brained because of the adrenaline of taking a plane ride (and passing through the checkpoint), and leave some of their electronics, and I found a shoe! A shoe! Who only puts one shoe on and then walks-off? It was an adult shoe, so it’s not like a child/toddleparent left it, no, someone made a conscious decision to leave their shoe… Maybe it was a protest? Anyway, just tell the guy that you left your Switch at the checkpoint, if he asks you what color it was say, it had yellow grips that slide off, but the screen was bounded by black.
Table View
School
Distance Driving (mi)
Straight Line Distance (mi)
Drive/Drone Difference
Standard Deviation (all schools)A
Fresno State
4.46
3.28
1.18
0.644
Hawai’i
1.420
0.696
0.784
1.001
Nevada (Reno)
2.410
1.69
0.720
1.067
Nevada – Las Vegas (SBS)b
18.426
8.93
11.258
Nevada – Las Vegas (NVS)c
2.125
0.590
1.535
0.391
San Diego State
9.861
8.08
1.78
0.252
San José State
6.575
4.60
1.975
0.164
A: Variance is calculated based upon DDD’s distance from the standard deviation of DDD… Why DDD? Because, DDD is King. b: Sam Boyd Stadium c: New Vegas Stadium (Allegiant Field)
Conclusion
Even if the stores are sold out of Switches, there are always places you can go to get them, some are definitely within walking distance of your house, maybe even right next door. If you do choose to do that, there are a few things to keep in mind: 1. Milk 2. Eggs, specifically from Natural Grocers, if they still have member pricing.
Thanks to u/Kaimeera for posting all of the voice lines Here is every Madam Nazar voice line and my own/generally accepted interpretation of each one. With so many easter eggs packed into one cabinet, I believe this is Rockstar's biggest "hint dump" yet, and a clear indication they haven't given up on us mystery hunters. If I am wrong on anything or you know one I missed please let me know in the comments.
0x00408006 = ~z~Have you seen... Gavin? -Reference to the infamous NPC searching for Gavin across the world of RDR2.
0x01682558 = ~z~I see many shadowy figures, sent to kill you... -Could be a number of things. Many things come to kill you in both GTAV and RDR2, but I don't know what could be considered "shadowy", outside of the disappearing aliens in the Gunrunning easter egg.
0x02455C87 = ~z~I see a three-legged man. And a long-legged woman. And they are happy. -Lester and Georgina after the Casino Heist. The "third leg" is Lester's cane.
0x04026A1E = ~z~I see a... strange man in a tall hat. He frightens me. -The Strange Man that appears in both RDR and RDR2.
0x0BC2CA7C = ~z~I smell lupins. So many lupins, they fill the valley floor... -Lupins are flowering plants. There are many valleys and plains filled with them in RDR2.
0x0C906264 = ~z~Good, I have been waiting for you. -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x0F60D1BE = ~z~I see a man. His name is... Johnny. He sits at home, but he longs to be on the spot again. -Reference to the GTA Online mechanic, who frequently refers to himself as "Johnny on the spot" when called.
0x1B98B32A = ~z~I see bitterness, and ambition, and madness. They shall all come to this city... -Reference to Michael, Franklin, and Trevor respectively.
0x1DA394D2 = ~z~I see the heavens opening, and the rain. -Both GTAV and RDR2 have post-rain sunshine as a weather effect. Some easter eggs are also rain-sensitive.
0x1E00F616 = ~z~I see a vengeful figure from your past, and a reward for your death... -Arthur has a bounty on his head for most of RDR2. The vengeful figure could refer to Dutch or Micah.
0x2B1ABB8E = ~z~I see mists and fog. -Either a generic fortune teller voice line, or refers to the intense fog in the forested regions of RDR2.
0x3AF43DBB = ~z~I see palm trees high in the sky, and shimmering pools of warm water, and people in, oh, oh dear... -I'm not too sure on this one, but it could potentially be a reference to the tendency for cars to end up in pools around Vinewood Hills after big stunt jumps.
0x3D56B345 = ~z~You were looking for Nazar, I think. -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x4A17A267 = ~z~I see danger in your future. You must take care crossing the road... -Getting hit by cars is a common problem in GTAV, as is running over people with your horse in towns in RDR2.
0x4CE892E1 = ~z~Kifflom... -The signature saying of the Epsilon Program.
0x4F2D953F = ~z~I see numbers... one, two three. -One third of the phone number easter egg.
0x4F9C57D0 = ~z~Nazar, teller of fortunes, finder of lost things... -Madam Nazar offers the Collector role in Red Dead Online, hence "finder of lost things".
0x5AD8779F = ~z~I see a rooftop, and a briefcase, and death. No, no, no, no, no, it is not... not a rooftop... -Reference to the GTA Online mission Rooftop Rumble, which was extremely popular for money grinding in the first year of release. Despite the name, this mission does not actually take place on a rooftop.
0x5C41619D = ~z~Yes, all is clear... -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x5D6EF371 = ~z~You were looking for me, yes? -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x5F900619 = ~z~I see you in high spirits. -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x6FE9F6D6 = ~z~Too soon, too soon have you come back... -Possible reference to the player repeatedly using the machine to hear many voice lines.
0x7B74C501 = ~z~I see a web, still tangled after years of unravelling. Will you be the one, I wonder? -Reference to either the spider web easter egg, or the Chiliad mystery in general. I believe this remark is a clue that there is more to solve, and a challenge of who will be the first to do so.
0x7EC016A1 = ~z~I see a beautiful diamond. The largest in the world. Ah, it is cracked... -The grand Diamond Casino and Resort being broken into and robbed.
0x8D17F800 = ~z~I see, I see... -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x8F6A344E = ~z~I see a lazy river, flowing by a scorched town... -There is a town burnt to a crisp in RDR2.
0x26F2F1F2 = ~z~I see a ridge in the land, and a falconer, and the black smoke rising to the east... -This has to be an RDR2 reference, though I don't remember any falconers. It is possible I missed a detail, it is a very long game.
0x37C69C95 = ~z~I see the sky covered by clouds. -A cloudy sky is the loading/respawning screen in RDR2. GTA loading screens are also often cloudy.
0x40EB3A6A = ~z~I think you were meant to stop by here, yes? -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x71B9557C = ~z~Madam will be here when you return. -Generic fortune teller voice line. She indeed is confined to her glass cabinet.
0x76C62201 = ~z~I hear birds, beautiful birds singing in a cage... -???
0x78CEE40F = ~z~See you soon, I think. -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x80B3DB7F = ~z~I see great and furious judgement descending from the clouds to strike you down... -God? Lighting strikes? The Thor hammer easter egg in RDR2? The orbital cannon in GTA Online?
0x86A7C5E6 = ~z~Come closer, Nazar wishes to speak to you. -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x93CA7E4A = ~z~You were looking for me, yes? -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x94ABA9D8 = ~z~I see the meaning of a song upon a stone. One is done, two was fun... -The rhyme written on the rocks in Blaine County for the Infinite 8 killer easter egg.
0x95D1F984 = ~z~I see trees. Such tall trees. -The Tall Trees region of RDR2.
0x97B943D7 = ~z~I hear a voice calling again and again, forlorn. A relative. He wants to do something. -Reference to Roman excessively calling Niko to go bowling in GTA IV.
0x178ED0A8 = ~z~I see the ruins of a battle fought long ago... -There is a Civil War battlefield point of interest in RDR2.
0x181E4BBE = ~z~I see a man in a white shirt, and a red vest. He is afraid to go to work... -The Diamond Casino valet Felipe, who players routinely murder for fun.
0x203F9619 = ~z~Madam Nazar has a beautiful collection. And she is generous. Go, see what trophy she gives you. -Madam Nazar buys valuable collectibles from the player in Red Dead Online. Could she also unlock a trophy in the arcade trophy shelf, like the one for owning all arcade games?
0x234DC9AD = ~z~Beware, not all love is kind. Just climb the mountain, and ask my poor Jolene. -The ghost girl easter egg of the late Jolene.
0x516A5CC8 = ~z~Welcome, wanderer, would you like to know the future? -Generic fortune teller easter egg.
0x532DDEEF = ~z~Come, come... magpie. -???
0x645D35FE = ~z~I see wet ground, and figures in the dark, and the spirit of a lonely girl... -Probably the Agnes Dowd ghost easter egg in RDR2.
0x746E2173 = ~z~Ah, you have found me. Come, come, hear your fortune. -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x811A2BFA = ~z~You seek some purpose, some meaning in the chaos of this life... -Many theorize the answer to the Chiliad Mystery is some underlying karmatic "true ending" to the game. Part of Story Mode's main conflict is Michael dealing with some existential quandaries about morality and death.
0x5895B9F1 = ~z~I see thunder, and lightning. -Thunderstorm weather is present in many easter eggs across both games.
0x6233DB6A = ~z~No, no, no, no, no... You must be patient, my love... -We need to wait for more updates to further the mystery?
0x8887A74F = ~z~I see... a bright sun in a clear sky. -Another weather line, but there usually isn't anything special associated with sunny weather.
0x9276E6BB = ~z~Remember, Madam Nazar is always listening. Ask and you may receive. -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x10124A92 = ~z~At the stroke of twelve, when the moon is fat, the beast will awaken within you. -The Beast, a werewolf the player can turn into in some Freemode Events and Adversary Modes in GTA Online, as well as a secret Director Mode actor for beating him in his secret fight against Bigfoot.
0x33199ECB = ~z~Welcome to Nazar's cabinet of wonders. -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x71588BAE = ~z~I see a scorched land. A river along a border that cannot be crossed... -The border of Mexico is visible in RDR2, but cannot be crossed.
0x77702F37 = ~z~I see a secluded isle, and upon it I see, ah... it is gone. -???
0x96949B4F = ~z~Your line is tangled, but I see it now... -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0x813078CC = ~z~I see numbers... seven, six, four. -One third of the phone number easter egg.
0x5085380D = ~z~I have revealed your path. Now... you must walk it... -Potentially a hint that Nazar's sayings are a clue toward something.
0x34880013 = ~z~The future cannot be changed. Return when it has become the past... -Francis Sinclair's appearance in RDR2 introduces an aspect of time travel into the mystery. Some parts of GTAV story mode occur before online, maybe there is something to be found by going back to the beginning?
0xA0CBFA2E = ~z~Madam Nazar sees your future, shall I tell you? -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0xA76B6838 = ~z~Remember, the stars favor those who leave no stone unturned. -Much like "he was wrong to start his hunt on a Tuesday," this is as blatant as Rockstar can get at telling us there is still mystery to uncover. The unsolved Panoramic Map in RDR2 does portray star positions.
0xA84C88A8 = ~z~Your every move is watched. Be careful... avoid even the smallest misdemeanor... -Minor crimes can get you wanted in both games. Could also be another suggestion at the karmatic/pacifist playthrough theory.
0xA507B91E = ~z~The future is open to me... -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0xA3075AF7 = ~z~I see beautiful trees in an arid land... -Another line talking about trees. Could refer to trees in the desert in both games. Los Santos/California has trees grow despite desert climate because of irrigation systems.
0xA3408FC2 = ~z~Come closer, let me see you. -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0xAC37F487 = ~z~I see a door in the shape of a circle, and behind it endless opportunities opening to you, if you are able to adapt. -The circular vault door of the Diamond Casino, protecting cash, gold, artwork, and diamonds. "Able to adapt" refers to the random spawns and different approaches of the heist.
0xAC710EE1 = ~z~Let me see... -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0xB05CDEAD = ~z~Ahh, of course... -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0xB4DECB38 = ~z~I see a face beneath the ice. Yet, not the face of a man, or a woman... -The alien under the ice in North Yankton in Prologue.
0xB6FA4AA9 = ~z~I see many people bowing down before a yellow statue of a... no, no that cannot be right. -???
0xB7BEACD4 = ~z~I see an emerald covered in filth, lying on a beautiful plain... -Likely refers to Emerald Ranch in RDR2. It is a farming community, so manure and livestock are everywhere (filth) and it is indeed located in a plain.
0xB8C7E398 = ~z~Come back soon. -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0xB1172B6F = ~z~Ah, it is you. I'm glad you have come. -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0xCBF36971 = ~z~I see grizzled mountains, and hungry eyes... -Could refer to the Grizzlies region of RDR2. Hungry eyes might be that of bears or wolves.
0xCC31A50E = ~z~I see numbers... five, one, one, two. -One third of the phone number easter egg.
0xDAF70F50 = ~z~I see a man with red hair, and a red mark upon his face. He does not belong here. -Francis Sinclair. He really doesn't belong here, as he presumably time traveled outside of his own reality.
0xE08ED444 = ~z~I see many cars in a white room. No, no, no... they are all the same car. And I see great wealth. And great boredom. This is a strange vision... -Reference to car duplication glitches, a popular way to make money in GTA Online.
0xE113C9F4 = ~z~The future is open to me... -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0xED3B9610 = ~z~I see true love in your future, but only if you act quickly! -???
0xEF1DAB95 = ~z~Take care... Your next drink will go to your head... -The Online Protagonist will pass out and wake up elsewhere after enough alcohol, which is necessary for the UFO tattoo easter egg. There are some moments in RDR2 where drinks have similar effects, such as the Witch's Brew, or the drink offered at Aberdeen Pig Farm.
0xEF6F7672 = ~z~I see... snow! -Both games feature snowy weather online for the holiday season.
0xF0CA2115 = ~z~Mine is the all-seeing eye. -All seeing eyes are a common visual in GTAV, especially on the SecuroServ app and the Chiliad Mural. They've even been featured in official artwork on Rockstar's website.
0xF8E39799 = ~z~Nazar sees all... -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0xF9577296 = ~z~I see... a man with evil intentions. He comes to take what is yours... -Could be any number of antagonists, Micah, Dutch, the Pinkertons, Devin Weston, Steve Haines, Avon Hertz, etc.
0xFC3052B7 = ~z~I see a great stone window, looking down upon a cold river... -???
0xFCDA6BA2 = ~z~I see cliffs in a silent desert. -???
0xFDB09265 = ~z~No, no, no, no, no, the mists do not clear... You must give me time... -Generic fortune teller voice line.
0xFEA2C689 = ~z~Look into my eyes.- Generic fortune teller voice line.
Don't forget this isn't the first fortune teller in GTAV, as Michael, Trevor and Franklin can use the Psychic Shoutout website in story mode.
I've read Gravity's Rainbow four times and thought I understood it pretty well. However, reading Beckett's Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnameable trilogy and the Beckett biography Damned to Fame, and a lot of Jung, and going through some difficult times made me realise how much within me that I had previously repressed. The slow process of integrating everything I was in denial about has allowed me to find peace that I never thought I would attain, having been clinically depressed and suicidal for around ten years. I started reading GR again with this new understanding of myself and realised that I actually hadn't understood it properly at all. I thought I'd share a few things I realised in case they might be of interest to any of you. I will discuss the book from a psychoanalytical perspective and a political perspective here, but I do not wish to reduce what is such a brilliant novel in its own right to these elements alone; I feel like the literary perspective has been discussed far more than these aspects though, and strongly doubt I would be able to add anything new to that excellent body of existing work. Even though I have realised that the political and psychoanalytical aspects are examined and explored very overtly in GR, I think they are often underexamined because the readers themselves haven't come to terms with their own inner conflicts, and are therefore in denial about certain things in themselves, such as their own possible complicity (through inaction or otherwise) with the System - much like Pokler. Therefore I am only going to be discussing the book within the very narrow frameworks of psychoanalysis and politics, while acknowledging that this comprises only a fraction of what it really is. The sheer density of GR can make it hard to tell what the hell is going on even just in terms of things like the plot. But maybe this isn't such a surprise, Pynchon's intelligence and education, how long he spent writing it, and and how much research he had to do in the process. It's only after doing a lot of the background reading that he refers to that things started to come together for me. With subjects such as Pavlov's theories of conditioning, statistics, physics, engineering, Pynchon reproduces key concepts within the text. For example:
Pavlov was fascinated with “ideas of the opposite.” Call it a cluster of cells, somewhere on the cortex of the brain. Helping to distinguish pleasure from pain, light from dark, dominance from submission... . But when, somehow—starve them, traumatize, shock, castrate them, send them over into one of the transmarginal phases, past borders of their waking selves, past “equivalent” and “paradoxical” phases —you weaken this idea of the opposite, and here all at once is the paranoid patient who would be master, yet now feels himself a slave... who would be loved, but suffers his world’s indifference, and, “I think,” Pavlov writing to Janet, “it is precisely the ultraparadoxical phase which is the base of the weakening of the idea of the opposite in our patients.” Our madmen, our paranoid, maniac, schizoid, morally imbecile—
However, for much of the history, particular that regarding intelligence agencies (whether that is WWII activity such as the O.S.S. or the S.O.E., or CIA activity in the 60s and 70s around the time that Pynchon was writing GR in a Californian beach house, very near where groups such as the Black Panthers were operating, targets of programs such as COINTELPRO and Operation CHAOS), the books had not even been written yet. I think the first few pages, with the carriage full of evacuees, can be interpreted as moving into the darkest parts of lost or repressed history, e.g.:
and it is poorer the deeper they go... ruinous secret cities of poor, places whose names he has never heard..
These names he has never heard could range from the Herero tribe whose genocide he discovered while writing V. ten years before, to Novi Pazar (with the Adenoid passage), to the all other hidden history in the book. I have also read people remarking on how in The Crying of Lot 49 it seems like Pynchon was somehow aware of MK-Ultra (which Dr Hilarius was involved with) before well the documents were leaked and the program confirmed. However, fortunately, many these history books have since been written. If anyone is interested, a great place to start is The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government, published in 2016, which follows Dulles from his time at the Wall Street law firm Sullivan and Cromwell to his time in the O.S.S. in Switzerland, working with Nazis in Operation Paperclip, to his directorship of the CIA through the 50s and 60s. Reading about this Cold War history, and also the writing of Huey Newton (who I strongly believe Enzian is in part based on), made a lot of GR far clearer. It is important to recognise that these histories of intelligence agencies contain irrefutable documented facts that the public at large is collectively in denial about - because they are too dark for them to acknowledge and face. For them to acknowledge these facts requires integrating that darkness into their conscious minds, before anything can be done about it on the political level. I think that, through the incorporation of all the world's darkness, from politics to history to sexual and paedophilic fantasies to etc..., this is the Secret Integration that Pynchon is trying to accomplish, and which concept he wrote a story about, published in Slow Learner. Reading this book causes the beginnings of this process, as all of the darkness is brought into one's mind by reading it. Another crucial area for me was understanding a bit about Freud and Jung. Particularly Freud's tendency to project his own incredibly powerful repression onto his patients, because of his own compulsion to analyse and differentiate everything, much in the Western tradition, seen in, for example, his five stages of psychosexual development, oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital stages. Some people don't need to delve into the darkest aspects of their unconscious to find peace, but since Freud did, he felt the need to inflict this also on his patients - seen in the many cases where he would tell victims of childhood sexual abuse that it was due to their own subconscious desires to be raped, which could, obviously, do enormous damage to his patients. His compulsion to do this might have stemmed from, alongside his overanalytical compulsions, the truth that anything we are in denial of or repress causes inner conflicts that manifest in our daily lives, and the only way to get rid of them is to integrate them into the conscious mind. Jung's equivalent of this is his statement that “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Jung's thinking on the unconscious, and particularly the notion of the collective unconscious - this idea that all the darkness in humanity is also within ourselves, and vice versa, much as in Daoism, another critical source for GR - is very useful to help understand the book. An interesting thing to consider is that the old psychoanalytic approach, more directive/authoritarian (going back to Mesmer powerfully dominating his hypnotic subjects), where the analyst would attempt to integrate these repressions into the conscious mind of the patient by force, has fallen out of favour - it is now seen that the permissive style, in which the therapist tries to help the patient realise things themselves without use of force, is a much healthier approach for the average person (though there are still some cases where the directive style can be more effective). The former's effects can be seen in GR when, after many sessions with Freud, Greta's darkest parts of her unconscious mind rise up and she begins murdering children. Pynchon links Freud's repressions to trauma carried down by Jews from life under the Romans, and elsewhere, slavery under the Ancient Egyptians, which is fundamental to their religious texts (linked itself with attitudes and trauma in the black population about the more recent black slavery).
The trouble with Sigmund was the place he happened to be living in, a drafty, crenelated deformity overlooking a cold little lake in the Bavarian Alps. Parts of it must have dated back to the fall of Rome. That was where Sigmund brought her. She had got the idea somewhere that she was part Jewish. Things in Germany by then, as everyone knows, were very bad. Margherita was terrified of being “found out.” She heard Gestapo in every puff of air that slipped in, among any of a thousand windways of dilapidation. Sigmund spent whole nights trying to talk it away. He was no better at it than Rollo. It was around this time that her symptoms began. However psychogenic these pains, tics, hives and nauseas, her suffering was real. Acupuncturists came down by Zeppelin from Berlin, showing up in the middle of the night with little velvet cases full of gold needles. Viennese analysts, Indian holy men, Baptists from America trooped in and out of Sigmund’s castle, stage-hypnotists and Colombian curanderos slept on the rug in front of the fireplace. Nothing worked. Sigmund grew alarmed, and before long as ready as Margherita to hallucinate. Probably it was she who suggested Bad Karma. It had a reputation that summer for its mud, hot and greasy mud with traces of radium, jet black, softly bubbling. Ah. Anyone who’s been sick in that way can imagine her hope. That mud would cure anything. Where was anybody that summer before the War? Dreaming. The spas that summer, the summer Ensign Morituri came to Bad Karma, were crowded with sleepwalkers. Nothing for him to do at the Embassy. They suggested a holiday till September. He should have known something was up, but he only went on holiday to Bad Karma—spent the days drinking Pilsener Urquelle in the cafe by the lake in the Pavilion Park. He was a stranger, half the time drunk, silly beer-drunk, and he hardly spoke their language. But what he saw must have been going on all over Germany. A premeditated frenzy.
This is a similar process to what Slothrop goes through in the Abreaction Ward, when under sodium amytal ("truth serum") and the supervision of psychoanalysts, Slothrop explores the parts of his unconscious that he has repressed, including his feelings towards race and homosexuality.
PISCES: We want to talk some more about Boston today, Slothrop. You recall that we were talking last time about the Negroes, in Roxbury. Now we know it’s not all that comfortable for you, but do try, won’t you. Now—where are you, Slothrop? Can you see anything? Slothrop: Well no, not see exactly...
By the presence of Red (Malcolm X) in the scene where Slothrop flees the black men at the jazz club trying to rape him down the toilet (which leads through a trip not only through Slothrop's own unconscious racism but also through the repressed histories, all the Preterite lost and forgotten.
Either he lets the harp go, his silver chances of song, or he has to follow. Follow? Red, the Negro shoeshine boy, waits by his dusty leather seat. The Negroes all over wasted Roxbury wait. Follow? “Cherokee” comes wailing up from the dance floor below, over the hi-hat, the string bass, the thousand sets of feet where moving rose lights suggest not pale Harvard boys and their dates, but a lotta dolled-up redskins. The song playing is one more lie about white crimes. But more musicians have floundered in the channel to “Cherokee” than have got through from end to end.
Here, among other things, if we consider Slothrop's mouth harp a (Rilke-referencing) metaphor, in part, for Pynchon's own tools of artistry, I feel like these floundering musicians can be seen as other writers who have not come to terms with the darkest parts of history, and thus their own unconscious. And the decision to delve into these things as an artist necessitates exposing one's own unconscious repressions, which causes you to be in a vulnerable position - particularly since They like to use these aspects of people to control them, as with Prentice and the drawing of the Scorpia Mossmoon lookalike he is given to activate the Kryptosam. In Pynchon's case, this means exposing his own racism and homophobia:
If Slothrop follows that harp down the toilet it’ll have to be headfirst, which is not so good, cause it leaves his ass up in the air helpless, and with Negroes around that’s just what a fella doesn’t want, his face down in some fetid unknown darkness and brown fingers, strong and sure, all at once undoing his belt, unbuttoning his fly, strong hands holding his legs apart—and he feels the cold Lysol air on his thighs as down come the boxer shorts too, now, with the colorful bass lures and trout flies on them. He struggles to work himself farther into the toilet hole as dimly, up through the smelly water, comes the sound of a whole dark gang of awful Negroes come yelling happily into the white men’s room, converging on poor wriggling Slothrop, jiving around the way they do singing, “Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!” [*] And the voice that replies is who but that Red, the shoeshine boy who’s slicked up Slothrop’s black patents a dozen times down on his knees jes poppin’ dat rag to beat the band... now Red the very tall, skinny, extravagantly conked redhead Negro shoeshine boy who’s just been “Red” to all the Harvard fellas—“Say Red, any of those Sheiks in the drawer?” “How ’bout another luck-changin’ phone number there, Red?”—this Negro whose true name now halfway down the toilet comes at last to Slothrop’s hearing—as a thick finger with a gob of very slippery jelly or cream comes sliding down the crack now toward his asshole, chevroning the hairs along like topo lines up a river valley—the true name is Malcolm, and all the black cocks know him, Malcolm, have known him all along—Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist sez, “Good golly he sure is all asshole ain’t he?” Jeepers Slothrop, what a position for you to be in! Even though he has succeeded in getting far enough down now so that only his legs protrude and his buttocks heave and wallow just under the level of the water like pallid domes of ice. Water splashes, cold as the rain outside, up the walls of the white bowl. “Grab him ’fo’ he gits away!” “Yowzah!” Distant hands clutch after his calves and ankles, snap his garters and tug at the argyle sox Mom knitted for him to go to Harvard in, but these insulate so well, or he has progressed so far down the toilet by now, that he can hardly feel the hands at all...
GR can be seen even as a process of abreaction that Pynchon underwent. If the rumours that he used drugs through writing it are true, then that would mean exposing things in him unconscious even to himself while writing it. Worth at this point also to note Jung's criticisms of Freud's use of abreaction, and thus the possible dangers of doing this.
Though traumata of clearly aetiological significance were occasionally present, the majority of them appeared very improbable. Many traumata were so unimportant, even so normal, that they could be regarded at most as a pretext for the neurosis. But what especially aroused my criticism was the fact that not a few traumata were simply inventions of fantasy and had never happened at all.
However, as Daoism asserts, light and darkness is in everything. For the Pavlovian Pointsman, who views things in binary, this is impossible to accept - the idea that for between every extreme - like black and white - lies a spectrum, a continuous rainbow. As Western humans understand things through this differentiation and analysis, this continuity causes an inherent conflict. Pointsman, the pure cause-and-effect man, the "Antimexico" (since Mexico, the statistician who thinks all can be explained through independent variables and probability distributions, takes the opposite position), says this on Daoist thinking early on.
“Pierre Janet —sometimes the man talked like an Oriental mystic. He had no real grasp of the opposites. ‘The act of injuring and the act of being injured are joined in the behavior of the whole injury.’ Speaker and spoken-of, master and slave, virgin and seducer, each pair most conveniently coupled and inseparable—The last refuge of the incorrigibly lazy, Mexico, is just this sort of yang-yin rubbish.
But by the end of Beyond the Zero, he's having a breakdown, as his unconscious is trying to tell him the truth of the Daoist wisdom he was so quick to reject in his scientific arrogance.
“Talking to myself, here. Little—sort of—eccentricity, heh, heh.” “Yang and Yin,” whispers the Voice, “Yang and Yin... .”
With all that out of the way, the plot of what GR is actually about can perhaps begin to be discussed. I'm going to make a lot of assumptions here that many of the male characters are based on Pynchon himself. You may disagree with this approach, which is very understandable, given my total lack of evidence. My justification for it is the following passages from Slothrop's trip down the toilet:
Here now is Crutchfield or Crouchfield, the westwardman. Not “archetypical” westwardman, but the only. Understand, there was only one. There was only one Indian who ever fought him. Only one fight, one victory, one loss. And only one president, and one assassin, and one election. True. One of each of everything. You had thought of solipsism, and imagined the structure to be populated—on your level—by only, terribly, one. No count on any other levels. But it proves to be not quite that lonely. Sparse, yes, but a good deal better than solitary. One of each of everything’s not so bad. Half an Ark’s better than none.
Then slightly later on:
Isn’t there supposed to be only one of each? A. Yes. Q. Then one Indian girl... A. One pure Indian. One mestiza. One criolla. [*] Then: one Yaqui. One Navaho. One Apache— Q. Wait a minute, there was only one Indian to begin with. The one that Crutchfield killed. A. Yes. Look on it as an optimization problem. The country can best support only one of each. Q. Then what about all the others? Boston. London. The ones who live in cities. Are those people real, or what? A. Some are real, and some aren’t. Q. Well are the real ones necessary? or unnecessary? A. It depends what you have in mind. Q. Shit, I don’t have anything in mind. A. We do.
However, given the extent to which Pynchon has managed to keep his life quiet, I'm aware that this assumption could be projection from me. I think might be by design of the book though:
“Pre cise-ly why,” leaps Rozsavolgyi, “we are now proposing, to give, Slothrop a com plete- ly dif-ferent sort, of test. We are now de sign- ing for him, a so called, ‘projec-tive’ test. The most famil-iar exam- ple of the type, is the Rorschach ink-blot. The ba- sic theory, is that when given an un struc-tured stimulus, some shape-less blob of exper-ience, the subject, will seek to impose, struc- ture on it. How, he goes a -bout struc-turing this blob, will reflect his needs, his hopes—will pro vide, us with clues, to his dreams, fan- tasies , the deepest re-gions of his mind.”
With those disclaimers out the way, here's what I think. I think Mexico is the "cheap nihilist" of Pynchon as a younger man, before he's delved into his own darkness, and still very much without belief in any sort of spiritualism:
“It makes no sense unless we also consider those who’ve passed over to the other side. We do transact with them, don’t we? Through specialists like Eventyr and their controls over there. But all together we form a single subculture, a psychical community, if you will.” “I won’t,” Mexico says dryly, “but yes I suppose someone ought to be looking into it.”
Pointsman is his analytical side, obsessed with cause-and-effect, which eventually, he comes to realise, necessitates delving in the darkest regions of Slothrop's mind, but still obsessed with control, never losing control:
Sign and symptoms. Was Spectro right? Could Outside and Inside be part of the same field? If only in fairness... in fairness... Pointsman ought to be seeking the answer at the interface... oughtn’t he... on the cortex of Lieutenant Slothrop. The man will suffer—perhaps, in some clinical way, be destroyed—but how many others tonight are suffering in his name? For pity’s sake, every day in Whitehall they’re weighing and taking risks that make his, in this, seem almost trivial. Almost. There’s something here, too transparent and swift to get a hold on—Psi Section might speak of ectoplasms—but he knows that the time has never been better, and that the exact experimental subject is in his hands. He must seize now, or be doomed to the same stone hallways, whose termination he knows. But he must remain open—even to the possibility that the Psi people are right. “We may all be right,” he puts in his journal tonight, “so may be all we have speculated, and more. Whatever we may find, there can be no doubt that he is, physiologically, historically, a monster. We must never lose control. The thought of him lost in the world of men, after the war, fills me with a deep dread I cannot extinguish...”
Prentice, the employee, the seasoned intelligence veteran, strikes me as a maturation from Pynchon's earlier Mexico phase, into a more realistic and experienced person and, by the time he gets into the Counterforce, "activist". This could be projection but given that the book was written from around the mid-60s until 1973, and how much changed in that time, I feel like this could be based on his own experiences with political activism in California around that time. Might be totally wrong about that, but I just got that impression from reading the weird "interview" towards the end of the book with the Wall Street Journal between the interviewer and the "spokesman for the Counterforce". Who knows, read it again and see what you think. And Slothrop, the experimental subject, is a model of Pynchon himself, rather than a differentiated portion of his own psyche which he turned into a character. So, what I think is going on: PISCES is using Slothrop (conditioned by Jamf) to exploit the racism of the Germans in psychological warfare with the whole Schwarzkommando thing. Pointsman is following his own pathological drive to analyse every facet of Slothrop's psyche. This includes Bloat taking photographs of Slothrop's map of girls linked to rockets, which we find out later might partly be falsified, which I interpret perhaps as Pynchon's recognition of his own attempt to impose his sexual interpretation system onto the world at large - interestingly something touched on early on in Bleeding Edge, though I can't find the passage right now, he quietly references the sexual hysterias of youth or something like that. Prentice is an employee of the Firm, a greater They than either PISCES or Pointsman, using his ability to have other people's fantasies, notionally for Pointsman, but really for some even grander scheme. This is reflected in the discussion of the message which Prentice picks up from the rocket which he and Slothrop see at the beginning of the book. From the Kryptosam message with the Scorpia lookalike:
Slowly then, a revelation through the nacreous film of his seed, in Negro-brown, comes his message: put in a simple Nihilist transposition whose keywords he can almost guess. Most of it he does in his head. There is a time given, a place, a request for help. He burns the message, fallen on him from higher than Earth’s atmosphere, salvaged from Earth’s prime meridian, keeps the picture, hmm, and washes his hands. His prostate is aching. There is more to this than he can see. He has no recourse, no appeal: he has to go over there and bring the operative out again. The message is tantamount to an order from the highest levels.
This "highest orders" thing can be compared with Slothrop seeing the hand of God pointing down at him.
There is in his history, and likely, God help him, in his dossier, a peculiar sensitivity to what is revealed in the sky. (But a hardon?) On the old schist of a tombstone in the Congregational churchyard back home in Mingeborough, Massachusetts, [*] the hand of God emerges from a cloud, the edges of the figure here and there eroded by 200 years of seasons’ fire and ice chisels at work, and the inscription reading: In Memory of Constant Slothrop, who died March ye 4th 1766, in ye 29th year of his age. Death is a debt to nature due, Which I have paid, and so must you.
...
6:43:16 BDST—in the sky right now here is the same unfolding, just about to break through, his face deepening with its light, everything about to rush away and he to lose himself, just as his countryside has ever proclaimed... slender church steeples poised up and down all these autumn hillsides, white rockets about to fire, only seconds of countdown away, rose windows taking in Sunday light, elevating and washing the faces above the pulpits defining grace, swearing this is how it does happen—yes the great bright hand reaching out of the cloud...
I think Pynchon recognised that with his unique abilities, perception, intelligence, and even privilege, it was his duty to delve into these hidden histories and play his role in bringing about this integration of the darkest levels of the unconscious. But Beyond the Zero is all about systems, and as Pynchon is well aware all systems are inherently limited because there are irrational elements in the world. So after this we have the briefer section in the Casino Hermann Goering, where the role of chance - or fate, depending on your interpretation - is recognised, and systems are examined, particularly language systems, like the drinking game Prince. So after that, with the third part, In the Zone, I think he may have been using drugs and various other techniques to bring out unconscious things in himself, to get past these conscious systems. And then completed with the Tarot reading performed at the end, where it says "here are the cards, exactly as they came up" - I think it's very possible that he did an actual Tarot reading at this point. Maybe I'm wrong about this though, I don't want to make too many assumptions given the lack of information we really have on him. If that thing with the drugs is true, it would explain that infamous quote Jules Seigal attributed to him, "I was so fucked up while I was writing it... that now I go back over some of those sequences and I can't figure out what I could have meant." But it's unclear whether that quote is real or not. How does this play into politics? I've written far too much already, but I'll just leave things with a couple more quotes and the observation that the final part, the Counterforce, contains some very valid criticisms of the countercultural movement as it manifested in the 60s through 70s. There's this critical passage when Enzian is motorbiking around the Zone, high on Pervitins, and realises that everything has come together for this. There's definitely a sense that Pynchon is acknowledging here the importance of his work, the fact it has done things that no other book had before. But in it too there's also, in it, the mocking of the temptation to view everything as an ordered conspiracy, and not acknowledge the non-rational and non-causal forces also at work, and mocking of his own self-seriousness.
There doesn’t exactly dawn, no but there breaks, as that light you’re afraid will break some night at too deep an hour to explain away—there floods on Enzian what seems to him an extraordinary understanding. This serpentine slagheap he is just about to ride into now, this ex-refinery, Jamf Ölfabriken Werke AG, is not a ruin at all. It is in perfect working order. Only waiting for the right connections to be set up, to be switched on... modified, precisely, deliberately by bombing that was never hostile, but part of a plan both sides—”sides?” —had always agreed on... yes and now what if we—all right, say we are supposed to be the Kabbalists out here, say that’s our real Destiny, to be the scholar-magicians of the Zone, with somewhere in it a Text, to be picked to pieces, annotated, explicated, and masturbated till it’s all squeezed limp of its last drop... well we assumed—natürlich!—that this holy Text had to be the Rocket, orururumo orunene the high, rising, dead, the blazing, the great one (“orunene” is already being modified by the Zone-Herero children to “omunene,” the eldest brother)... our Torah. What else? Its symmetries, its latencies, the cuteness of it enchanted and seduced us while the real Text persisted, somewhere else, in its darkness, our darkness... even this far from Südwest we are not to be spared the ancient tragedy of lost messages, a curse that will never leave us... . But, if I’m riding through it, the Real Text, right now, if this is it... or if I passed it today somewhere in the devastation of Hamburg, breathing the ashdust, missing it completely... if what the IG built on this site were not at all the final shape of it, but only an arrangement of fetishes, come-ons to call down special tools in the form of 8th AF bombers yes the “Allied” planes all would have been, ultimately, IG-built, by way of Director Krupp, through his English interlocks—the bombing was the exact industrial process of conversion, each release of energy placed exactly in space and time, each shock-wave plotted in advance to bring precisely tonight’s wreck into being thus decoding the Text, thus coding, recoding, redecoding the holy Text... If it is in working order, what is it meant to do? The engineers who built it as a refinery never knew there were any further steps to be taken. Their design was “finalized,” and they could forget it. It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted... secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology... by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying, “Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of Nation] is at stake,” but meaning, most likely, dawn is nearly here, I need my night’s blood, my funding, funding, ahh more, more... . The real crises were crises of allocation and priority, not among firms—it was only staged to look that way—but among the different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by the ruling elite... Yes but Technology only responds (how often this argument has been iterated, dogged and humorless as a Gaussian reduction, among the younger Schwarzkommando especially), “All very well to talk about having a monster by the tail, but do you think we’d’ve had the Rocket if someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn’t wanted to chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians? Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it’ll make you feel less responsible—but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardens of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they are—” We have to look for power sources here, and distribution networks we were never taught, routes of power our teachers never imagined, or were encouraged to avoid... we have to find meters whose scales are unknown in the world, draw our own schematics, getting feedback, making connections, reducing the error, trying to learn the real function... zeroing in on what incalculable plot? Up here, on the surface, coaltars, hydrogenation, synthesis were always phony, dummy functions to hide the real, the planetary mission yes perhaps centuries in the unrolling... this ruinous plant, waiting for its Kabbalists and new alchemists to discover the Key, teach the mysteries to others... And if it isn’t exactly Jamf Ölfabriken Werke? what if it’s the Krupp works in Essen, what if it’s Blohm & Voss right here in Hamburg or another make-believe “ruin,” in another city? Another country? YAAAGGGGHHHHH! Well, this is stimulant talk here, yes Enzian’s been stuffing down Nazi surplus Pervitins these days like popcorn at the movies, and by now the bulk of the refinery—named, incidentally, for the famous discoverer of Oneirine—is behind them, and Enzian is on into some other paranoid terror, talking, talking, though each man’s wind and motor cuts him off from conversation.
Some words of wisdom from the seasoned veteran Prentice:
“You’re a novice paranoid, Roger,” first time Prentice has ever used his Christian name and it touches Roger enough to check his tirade. “Of course a well-developed They-system is necessary—but it’s only half the story. For every They there ought to be a We. In our case there is. Creative paranoia means developing at least as thorough a We-system as a They-system—” “Wait, wait, first where’s the Haig and Haig, be a gracious host, second what is a ‘They-system,’ I don’t pull Chebychev’s Theorem on you, do I?” “I mean what They and Their hired psychiatrists call ‘delusional systems.’ Needless to say, ‘delusions’ are always officially defined. We don’t have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. It’s the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart. Your idea that Pointsman sent Gloaming takes a wrong fork. Without any contrary set of delusions—delusions about ourselves, which I’m calling a We-system—the Gloaming idea might have been all right—” “Delusions about ourselves?” “Not real ones.” “But officially defined.” “Out of expediency, yes.” “Well, you’re playing Their game, then.” “Don’t let it bother you. You’ll find you can operate quite well. Seeing as we haven’t won yet, it isn’t really much of a problem.” Roger is totally confused.
And finally, amid all this darkness, in a superlatively dark book, some hope at last, to hold onto, that makes life worth living, and why I think that despite what many say, GR is not a nihilistic work at all (Tchitcherine, the born nihilist, is almost a parody of this position). It starts with Slothrop's awakening to nature:
Trees, now—Slothrop’s intensely alert to trees, finally. When he comes in among trees he will spend time touching them, studying them, sitting very quietly near them and understanding that each tree is a creature, carrying on its individual life, aware of what’s happening around it, not just some hunk of wood to be cut down. Slothrop’s family actually made its money killing trees, amputating them from their roots, chopping them up, grinding them to pulp, bleaching that to paper and getting paid for this with more paper. “That’s really insane.” He shakes his head. “There’s insanity in my family.” He looks up. The trees are still. They know he’s there. They probably also know what he’s thinking. “I’m sorry,” he tells them. “I can’t do anything about those people, they’re all out of my reach. What can I do?” A medium-size pine nearby nods its top and suggests, “Next time you come across a logging operation out here, find one of their tractors that isn’t being guarded, and take its oil filter with you. That’s what you can do.”
And then, after Slothrop's harp makes its trip down the toilet, and through all of the darkness of the book until that point, where does it next show up? After he draws a rocket mandala, scrawls Rocketman was here on a wall, after the sequence with the Magician using black magic and a mandrake to multiply money, and a delegate from the Committee on Idiopathic Archetypes shows up to visit:
Crosses, swastikas, Zone-mandalas, how can they not speak to Slothrop? He’s sat in Säure Bummer’s kitchen, the air streaming with kif moires, reading soup recipes and finding in every bone and cabbage leaf paraphrases of himself... news flashes, names of wheelhorses that will pay him off enough for a certain getaway... . He used to pick and shovel at the spring roads of Berkshire, April afternoons he’s lost, “Chapter 81 work,” they called it, following the scraper that clears the winter’s crystal attack-from-within, its white necropolizing... picking up rusted beer cans, rubbers yellow with preterite seed, Kleenex wadded to brain shapes hiding preterite snot, preterite tears, newspapers, broken glass, pieces of automobile, days when in superstition and fright he could make it all fit, seeing clearly in each an entry in a record, a history: his own, his winter’s, his country’s... instructing him, dunce and drifter, in ways deeper than he can explain, have been faces of children out the train windows, two bars of dance music somewhere, in some other street at night, needles and branches of a pine tree shaken clear and luminous against night clouds, one circuit diagram out of hundreds in a smudged yellowing sheaf, laughter out of a cornfield in the early morning as he was walking to school, the idling of a motorcycle at one duskheavy hour of the summer... and now, in the Zone, later in the day he became a crossroad, after a heavy rain he doesn’t recall, Slothrop sees a very thick rainbow here, a stout rainbow cock driven down out of pubic clouds into Earth, green wet valleyed Earth, and his chest fills and he stands crying, not a thing in his head, just feeling natural...
And later:
Slothrop moseys down the trail to a mountain stream where he’s left his harp to soak all night, wedged between a couple of rocks in a quiet pool. ... Through the flowing water, the holes of the old Hohner Slothrop found are warped one by one, squares being bent like notes, a visual blues being played by the clear stream. There are harpmen and dulcimer players in all the rivers, wherever water moves. Like that Rilke prophesied, And though Earthliness forget you, To the stilled Earth say: I flow. To the rushing water speak: I am. It is still possible, even this far out of it, to find and make audible the spirits of lost harpmen. Whacking the water out of his harmonica, reeds singing against his leg, picking up the single blues at bar 1 of this morning’s segment, Slothrop, just suckin’ on his harp, is closer to being a spiritual medium than he’s been yet, and he doesn’t even know it.
There's hope after all, and I think it's reflected in how much more positive all his later works have been. Thanks so much for reading, I hope it was at least vaguely interesting, not too much of an unstructured ramble. Also, this is such a great subreddit, really I love the community here. My very best to you all!
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